www.pluralsight.com has great training resources
Any of the Murach books are good

Don't try to grasp all of it at once. Learn C# first as you'll need it for the other stuff.

BTW, your processor can't truely specify any of what you've said. They can specify .NET, but can't force you to choose C#, SIlverlight, Winforms, or SQL Server. If you had a VB.NET console app running against MySQL, the processor wouldn't know nor should they care.

>The day came when I had to make the decision about replacing VFP. My marketplace, payment processors, banks, etc., made the decision for me and it is . . .
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> . . . . . . . . (open the envelope please) . . . . . . . .
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>C# / Silverlight / Winforms / SQL Server.
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>Recommendations appreciated as to the most effective way to start climbing the learning curve?
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>I have 1 to 2 years before I have to be fully productive, but would like to do something productive while learning. For that I have an old dBase-V application (yes dBase, circa 1985) I can migrate. It's fairly simple and much of what I do can be applied to payment processing. In the meantime, if (when) I do something stupid with the old app it won't be the end of the world.